The Fallen
by lionesseyes13
Summary: On All Hallow's Eve, Roald II is visited by his grandfather's spirit. Rated T for discussion of suicide.


Author's Note: This was written for the October Challenge over at the Tamora Pierce Writing Experiment forum. There is discussion of King Roald's suicide in this fic, so please don't read this story if that topic is too upsetting or too offensive to you.

Disclaimer: I own nothing except the plot.

_"Deep into the darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing,/Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before."_ -Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven

The Fallen

"I'm bored," Zenoby of Naxen complained, scrunching up her freckled nose and twirling a lock of hair, as vibrant an orange as a carrot, around her finger.

As far as eight-year-old Prince Roald was concerned, Zenoby was always bored, even though she never failed to leave a tremendous amount of chaos in her wake. Perhaps somebody whose skin was dotted couldn't be anything but unbalanced, or maybe someone with orange hair couldn't risk being any less bright—any less unconventional—than her hair. Then again, her appearance might not have shaped her character at all. Maybe it was her name that was everything. After all, how could a Zenoby be normal, sane, or well-adjusted?

"Is there anything you'd like to do?" Roald asked politely. Anything that didn't risk both their necks, he added mentally, but didn't say aloud, because heirs to the throne were not supposed to offend their own cousins.

"If there was anything I wanted to do, I'd be doing it instead of being bored." Zenoby snorted, rolling her chestnut eyes as though he had said something that indicated he had all the wit of a jam jar.

"You could play in the leaves with Kalasin, Liam, Jasson, Vania, Jaquetta, and Geoffrey," he reminded her, nodding at the pile of leaves in which his cousins and siblings were rolling.

Watching the laughing children dump handfuls of leaves upon each other's heads, Roald wished he could join them. He wanted to feel the dampness of the leaves as they whispered down his face. He wanted to inhale their crispness. Yet, he couldn't do any of that, not anymore.

Last year, a slug had landed on his cheek, and, now that he understood that vile, slimy monsters lurked in the colorful leaves, he wanted nothing to do with leaf piles. Now that he understood that the leaves were bright because they were dead and not alive, he didn't want to play around in them, as that seemed oddly disrespectful of the dead and of death itself. Now that he knew that the crisp scent of the leaves was nothing more than the odor of rot, he couldn't enjoy the smell of leaves that had always defined autumn for him. Even the caramel apples the nursemaids had offered the children today in honor of All Hallow's Eve had nauseated him instead of delighting his tastebuds. Sweetness to him was now the taste and smell of death and decay.

"I'm not a child anymore," Zenoby informed him haughtily, lifting her nose in the air. "If you're too old for rolling in the leaves like a pig in the mud, I certainly am."

When Roald didn't reply, Zenoby, a dreamy cast falling over her sharp features, continued, "I want to do something fun. Something wild. Something dangerous." A spark, as deadly as any that started a fire that burned a city, gleamed in her eyes as she pointed at a towering oak tree a few meters away from them. "I'm going to climb to the top of that tree."

"It's dangerous," stammered Roald, gawking at her.

"That's why I want to do it," Zenoby answered, tossing the words over her shoulder as she strode over to the oak.

"You're not allowed to climb that tree, especially not to the top," protested Roald, hurrying after her.

"Tell the nursemaids on me, then." Smoothly, Zenoby leapt onto the first branch. Then, her feet and hands darting deftly from limb to limb, she climbed higher and higher.

Roald knew that he should fetch a nursemaid. After all, if she fell she might break her foolish head or her neck. However, something about the way she moved so gracefully from branch to branch made him not want to interrupt her flow. She was so obviously built for action that it seemed like a blasphemy against nature to attempt to confine her movements to the earth.

"By the time they arrive, I'll be too high for them to stop me," Zenoby called down to him, as he stared up at her. "They won't be able to get me to come down until I want to go back down to the boring earth."

As he watched her, her foot sent a shower of russet and gold leave cascading down to the ground. Oblivious, she continued her ascent, but Roald could only think as the leaves tumbled and twirled toward the dirt that, by falling, they had made the tree look a little more skeletal—a little more prepared for the barrenness of winter.

"It's so high up here," shouted Zenoby, who had reached the top of the tree, interrupting his thoughts. Fear, which he had never heard in her voice before, flooded her words as she went on, her hysteria mounting in every syllable, "Mithros, it's so high. I didn't even notice it was so high until I looked down. Now I don't know if I'll ever be able to get down, but I must get down. I can't stay up here forever, and I'm so scared I'm going to fall. I don't want to fall."

"Don't worry," Roald hollered, jumping onto the first branch, and beginning to climb up after her. She was a year older than him, but, somehow, because she was so insanely irresponsible, everybody had always expected him to look out for her, and he would rescue her now. "I'm coming to get you."

He was between his sixth and seventh branch—his hands grasping the seventh and his right foot in the air while his left rested on the sixth—when his nurse, furious as a beaten pirate, bellowed across the garden, "Prince Roald of Conte, get down from there at once, or your father will hear about this!"

Shocked by his nurse's shout, Roald reflexively relinquished his grip on the branch as his foot slipped off the other limb. A terrible, sinking lurch made him feel as though his stomach had plummeted out of him, and, realizing what he had done, he floundered, desperate trying to grab a branch or regain his footing.

It was too late for that, though. He was falling, faster than any lead, the wind ripping at his hair and face. His heart was pounding and his brain was racing, and nothing his mind or his heart did could save him now. He was falling, and he was going to crash into the ground. Smashing into the ground was going to hurt, of course, but not nearly as much as imagining the crash would.

This fall was worse than any nightmare one, because, when he pinched himself, he didn't wake up. He couldn't stop the sensation of sinking toward hard dirt that wanted to break him. Every second of his fall was an eternity of torture. Then, he hit the ground, landing in a pile of leaves that stank of endings and falls, and the real torment began.

There was no lightning bolt of agony flashing through his body after the crash. There was only a blackness that made him forget himself, reducing him to nothing more than the hopelessness and the horror that had thundered through his veins when he fell from the tree. That horrible knowledge of falling toward an unavoidable pain was the root and rhythm of what it meant to be alive, and, even in the darkness, that root and rhythm remained, making him see another fall, or the same fall in a different setting.

_He had always hated hunting. Hunting was for cruel men like his father, King Jasson- for men who felt a thrill whenever growling dogs drove a fox to ground, instead of sympathy for the fox that wasn't wily enough to live. Hunting wasn't for the faint of heart, and he was the faint of heart, a man who had been driven to ground like a fox that just wasn't cunning enough to survive. Hunting wasn't for a man, like him, who felt as if a sword had been plunged into his chest whenever he saw a dagger penetrate the still beating heart of a deer. _

_Oh, and lately, he had learned exactly what it felt like to have a knife cut into his heart. His nephew Roger, whom he had loved like a son. He had seen to Roger's education, first ensuring that the boy received knighthood training, and then encouraging the young man, just out of his Ordeal, to further his magical knowledge at the university in Carthak. He had talked about everything—books, politics, religion, and even feelings—with Roger. He had watched Roger grow from a baby to a waddling, babbling toddler, to a tall boy, to a young man with surprisingly little of the clumsiness of adolescence, and, finally, into a brilliant man. Roger, who had always been so charming, had smiled at Lianne while plotting her death. Roger, who had always been so handsome, had been so unfathomably ugly on the inside. He still remembered how the boy Roger's eyes had once been filled with eagerness and promise…All that promise was gone now. _

_And so was Lianne. He couldn't live without Lianne. He had tried to, for Jon and for his country, but he couldn't. Lianne wasn't just the half that made him whole or even his better half; she was his everything in the most simple and profound sense possible. With her gone, all he could think about the gaping hole his life was in her absence. His life was defined by her absence, not his existence. Without her, he could feel nothing except pain. Love wasn't companionship, affection, or even passion. It contained and transcended all those emotions. Love wasn't marrying someone or having a child, although those experiences could express, create, or expand love. Love was being so connected to someone that, if that person died, there was nothing left of you. Love was being shattered with only the vaguest hope of being reassembled, and he only hoped that his son would never experience love. _

_His son. He would have to leave Jon in charge of the kingdom, but perhaps that would be better for Tortall. Jon was young and strong—ready to lead a country. Leadership wasn't for the faint of heart, and Roald was much too weak to rule now that Lianne was dead. _

_He knew exactly what he was doing when he urged his mount to jump off the bluff. He was well aware of how impossible it was to land safely on the other side, and he had no intention of doing so. In fact, he would have been disappointed if he did land on the other side. He wanted to plummet through the air with nothing to prevent him from crashing into the rocky bottom of the gorge. He wanted to smash through the barrier that separated him from Lianne. It was only when he was sinking like a bird with broken wings toward the rocks at the bottom of the gorge that he began to regret his decision._

_It was only when he had sacrificed his life to be with her in death that he thought that she would never have wished for him to abandon their son or Tortall for his sake. Then, it was all too late for regrets. Everything was happening too quickly. There was the end of the fall and the beginning of the pain. There was descending darkness and then rising light as he saw Lianne again. _

_Her body was whole and so was her spirit. She was smiling at him, her face as radiant, uncorrupted, and beautiful as it had been when they had first met, but a wisdom and a serenity glistening in her eyes that could never have been present in her youth. She was even more perfect in death than she had been in life. Joy surged through him only to be replaced by soul-splitting anguish when he felt himself being dragged away from her. Even in death he would be separated from her. Not for forever, or so a soft voice whispered in his ear, but just for as long as it took to make his body and soul whole again. He was sure that however long it took, though, it would feel like an eternity._

With a scream, Roald broke free or was shoved out of his dead grandfather's memories, which, as far as Roald was concerned, should have died with than man, and felt himself falling onto something soft. Opening his eyes, his heart pounding, he saw to his relief that he was stretched out on his bed.

"Relax, Roald," his father, sitting in a chair beside his bed, said. "You've had a healing. Those always give you bad dreams."

"This wasn't a bad dream, Papa." Roald shook his head and choked out, "I'm not who I am."

"You must have hit your head harder than Duke Baird thought." His father's forehead furrowed. "It is impossible for you to not be who you are."

"I'm who you named me to be," responded Roald quietly. "Your dead father."

"You are yourself," King Jonathan countered firmly. "Your name doesn't make you. If names shaped us, I would be like all the previous Jonathans in our family, which, of course, would mean I would have many personalities, because all of them were different from each other."

"People say that I'm like your father, Papa." Biting his lip, Roald ducked his head.

"And people said that I was like my grandfather," remarked his father, smiling slightly. "However, I am not exactly like my grandfather, and you are not exactly like yours. I am my own person, and you are yours."

"If you say so," agreed Roald, dubiousness lacing his tone.

"Being like my father isn't a bad thing." Gently, King Jonathan clasped his shoulders. "I wouldn't have named you after him if it was. My father was a kind, gentle man. He brought stability to the country after my grandfather's wars, and he knew how to keep peace with other realms. There aren't enough peacemakers in this world, Roald, so the few of them that exist are blessed."

"Even if they kill themselves?" Roald demanded. "Is my grandfather still blessed even though he took his own life?"

"Roald." His father's face was as pale as Roald's sheets. "You must understand that—"

"I do understand." Roald's voice was soft but cold. "I know exactly what he was thinking when he killed himself. Since he fell to his death, it's only natural that he should haunt me when I fell on All Hallow's Eve, the day the veil separating the living from the dead is at its thinnest. How often do you have services given for the rest of his soul, anyway?"

"I have the Black God's priests dedicate a service to him every year on the day he died," answered King Jonathan somberly.

"I think you should have more prayers said for him, Papa," Roald whispered, fiddling with his blanket to avoid looking at his father. "After what he did to himself, he needs a lot of purification before his soul can be made whole, and, where he is, he needs us to pray for him because he can't pray for himself. That's what he was trying to tell me, I think."

"The fact that he's being made whole after destroying himself is a mercy." King Jonathan pressed his lips together. "He left a country reeling in confusion when he killed himself."

"He was sorry to leave behind you and his people," burst out Roald. "He was just so heartbroken that he couldn't deal with the pressure of leadership anymore."

"He was so blinded by his own pain that he didn't really think about all the misery his death would cause others, because if he had really thought about it, he wouldn't have done what he did." King Jonathan pinched the bridge of his nose. "Roald, when he killed himself, he left a distraught young man to govern a country. Expecting me to take the throne when I was grieving my mother's death and wrestling with Roger's betrayal just like he was, that was selfish. Adding the burden of dealing with his suicide and still expecting me to rule when he couldn't was cruel."

"Maybe he realized that at the end, Papa," murmured Roald. Then, glancing up at his father, he asked, "Why did you name me after your father if you hate him?"

"I don't hate him." King Jonathan sighed. "As a child I loved him, and, even now, I love him even while I hate him for the way he left me. There's much I admire in his character despite what he did to himself in the end."

"But you didn't name me after him because you admired his character." Roald's blue gaze locked on his father's. "You named me after him because you wanted him and you to have a second chance, which means you should pray for him, because he wants the same thing you do—redemption. "

"I'll pray for him, and I'll promise you that I'll never abandon you like he abandoned me." Gently, the king clasped Roald's shoulder. "Now, you'll be happy to hear that the nursemaids managed to rescue Zenoby."

"She's as crazy as a rabid dog." Roald's lips twitched. "Maybe we should have left her in the tree."

"She takes after her father," remarked King Jonathan wryly. "The only reason Gary dares to think half the things he does is that he knows I won't have him decapitated."


End file.
